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FeedProdigal Son (Part I)
Will Tommy Garcia rescue Gladwyne’s foundering Peace Mission? Not if Mother Divine has her way.
(page 1 of 6)
[Part 1 of 2. Click here for the conclusion, found in Main Line Today's October issue.]
“She is wonderful. She is wonderful. God bless Mother forever.”
With the Peace Mission seemingly on its last legs, its picturesque headquarters in Gladwyne is still a sight to see, even if its aging matriarch, Mother Divine, remains largely out of sight. Just when a savior seemed unlikely, a former Peace Mission prodigy has emerged with a plan to resurrect the controversial movement—if only he could get Mom onboard.
Mrs. M.J. “Mother” Divine stands before her 20 visitors in a matching navy-blue overcoat, knit hat and wool pants. Her earmuffs are white, her orthotic shoes an institutional tan. Not that color matters here at Woodmont, the Gladwyne headquarters of the Rev. M.J. “Father” Divine’s International Peace Mission Movement, an interracial religious and social sect that peaked in the 1930s and still worships its founder as God.
The 74-acre Woodmont estate is the dissipating movement’s self-proclaimed “Mount of the House of the Lord.” Beyond its parking lot, which Mr. Leon supervises, a series of solar panels powers the property’s newest structure, a library dedicated to housing Father’s words and wisdom. “We’re going green around here,” says Mr. Roger, another Peace Mission “brother.”
With a date-stone that reads 2009 A.D.F.D. (Anno Domini Father Divine), the library is one of two Peace Mission shrines. Father is buried in a reported $300,000-$500,000 mausoleum in the shadows of the striking 1892 Gothic manor house built by Alan Wood Jr. Perched high above what were once Wood’s steel mills in Conshohocken, Woodmont was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1998. Near the bronze plaque indicating as much, a matching smaller one simply reads, “Peace.”
“No snow is falling on us,” says Mother privately but within earshot, her eyes but horizontal slits recessed in a puffy face. “It’s a beautiful sky. It’s good to get out of the house.”
Then, as if on cue, Mother greets the participants in Woodmont’s Winter Trek, a long-standing public walking tour of the grounds. Her voice elevates a notch: “Peace, everyone. Welcome. Thank God for this beautiful day. Let’s first go over here and take a good look at Conshohocken.”
With a female follower on each arm—one black, one white—Mother makes her way up the embankment of Montgomery County’s highest peak as another follower fawns over her: “Peace, Mother dear.”
But that’s as far as Mother Divine gets this February morning. For the first time in more than 30 years, she won’t be leading the tour. Yvette Calm will. When approached on her retreat to the manor house, Mother immediately consents to an interview at the mere mention of discussing Father Divine and Woodmont. “I can talk to you right now,” she says, her eyes widening, her mouth forming a smile harmonious with her kingdom name, Sweet Angel.
But almost instantly, the request—like others before and since for this story—is quashed by her entourage. “Later, after the walk,” several say in unison.
Now in her mid-80s, Mother Divine has lived an extraordinarily public life. But as her physical and mental health has deteriorated, she’s been carefully coddled and guarded. Her receding public persona raises questions—suspicions even—about the Peace Mission’s intentional community (sociological lingo for a cult) and about Woodmont, also the spiritual headquarters for Palace Mission, Inc., one of the movement’s incorporated churches. Even so, the estate remains free and open to public tours on Sunday afternoons from April through October.
Father Divine died 45 years ago this month. His death is the impetus behind the group’s annual “Holy Days” open house held Sept. 10-12. Yet Peace Mission members continue to live at Woodmont and various Philadelphia outposts with same-sex, “opposite-complected” (Peace Mission speak) roommates. They practice celibacy. Followers say they neither look back nor forward. Ideologically, there’s no past or future. There are no time lines, no seasons. They do not reminisce. Heaven is on Earth—or at least atop the Mount of the House of the Lord.
At the movement’s height, Peace Mission membership was thought to be 2 million, with an estimated 170 “heavens,” or extension settlements. Now, like their aging matriarch, most followers—all of them systematically stripped of family at one point—are in their 80s, 90s or older.
